Get your conference anti-harassment policy here!

This is a example anti-harassment policy suitable for most open source, computing, or technology-related conferences. It may be adopted unchanged or tweaked to suit your conference.

Why have an official anti-harassment policy for your conference? First, it is necessary (unfortunately). Harassment at conferences is incredibly common – for example, see this timeline of sexist incidents in geek communities. Second, it sets expectations for behavior at the conference. Simply having an anti-harassment policy can prevent harassment all by itself. Third, it encourages people to attend who have had bad experiences at other conferences. Finally, it gives conference staff instructions on how to handle harassment quickly, with the minimum amount of disruption or bad press for your conference.

FWIW: I have yet to actually attend the Central Pennsylvania Open Source Conference (cposc.org)
but
A couple of years ago I was supposed to speak (I sadly had to cancel due to illness). That was also the year that I had sent all of the speakers for the Ohio LinuxFest a note saying “We will not tolerate any inappropriate or sexualized images or speech in your talks.” I encouraged the CPOSC people to do the same.

They thanked me for my concern but told me, “We don’t have that kind of problem here.”

Thanks, Kim! Just FYI, I didn’t add it to the list of conferences using a policy based on this policy because, well, it isn’t based on it. :) But it’s good to see that EclipseCon has a policy and I hope other conferences follow suit!

So… do you actually code anything or contribute to the open source software / hardware community in any tangible way or do you just bitch and moan about having a period and write conference conduct policies?

All contributors to Geek Feminism are required to fail a coding test before being allowed to post and I’m happy to report that Valerie Aurora, alleged author of relatime patches and union mounts, failed comprehensively.

I don’t know who really wrote that code, but thank goodness she didn’t, or we’d have to admit that feminists can make societal critiques and do other work, and that would decrease the amount of tedious flaming in the world, at an immense cost to the entire Internet.